Century
Background
As outlined in Chapter Five, there was a clear expansion of the education system of Hong Kong from the 1970s to 1990s. The then Hong Kong Government stated that the “fundamental” aim of school education was to “develop the potential of every individual child, so that our students become independent-minded and socially-aware adults, equipped with knowledge, skills and attitudes which help them to lead a full life as individuals….” (Education & Manpower Branch, 1993a p.8) To fulfill such targets, what an education system should not do is to use a single and academically biased set of measurement criteria to predict the potential of their youngsters and sort them early into different ability groups in such a way as to restrict the quality of their future education and career opportunities. In a competitive modern environment with unpredictable and rapid changes, a selective education system is simply too wasteful, both in defining “talent” too shortsightedly, and in giving up other talents that are potentially useful in a broad sense. The alternative, and perhaps a more sensible utilization of human capital, is to expand the education system to
enable as many young people as possible to get their talents developed for potential use.
Expectations on Public Examinations
The clearly expressed goals for education in Hong Kong then were wide ranging. The “Statement of Aims” published in 1993 by the Government states that schools should:
1) help students develop their potential;
2) provide education to meet community needs;
3) help pupils build a strong foundation of literacy and numeracy; 4) develop pupils’ ability to think independently and logically;
5) encourage pupils to acquire knowledge, skills and a better understanding of the world;
6) provide opportunities for pupils to acquire practical and technical skills;
7) help pupils develop a sense of civic awareness and social skills; 8) contribute to pupils’ personal growth by helping them develop a
sense of morality;
9) help pupils develop health awareness and good physical coordination; and
10) help pupils develop their creativity and aesthetic awareness. (Education and Manpower Branch, 1993bG)
done. Hence after a period of dramatic progress in terms of quantity, the need was felt for education in Hong Kong to further develop in terms of quality. To achieve this, the next step would be to truly open up opportunities for all. Efforts were to be made to change the nature of the education system from one designed primarily to select to one that was educational in a diversified way, aiming at drawing out the potentials of the younger generation instead of simply spoon-feeding them with a large volume of academic information. In such a system, the function of assessment would change, from one primarily for selection, to one that would give information on a diversified spectrum of skills and competencies of individuals. Instead of what the students could not do and their relative performance in comparison with others, what would be important to find out was what had been achieved and the effectiveness of teaching in the learning process. This would be a profound paradigm shift, involving a re-conceptualization of the nature and function of educational assessments captured by Gipps as “….a move from testing and examinations-as-hurdle model (where you make the exam as difficult as possible and give the candidate little guidance, the proof of quality being in the numbers that fail) to an assessment model where we all try to give all candidates a real opportunity to show what they know, understand and can do (by giving more guidance, by sharing criteria with the student, and making the tasks match real life or classroom tasks).” (Gipps, 1998 p.32)
Expressed in terms of the findings regarding the functions of public examinations in the literature review in Chapter Two, public
examinations in Hong Kong at the turn of the 20th century were expected by the policy makers to move towards the right on the list below without compromising those on the left:
1) Selection vs. certification 2) Reliability vs. validity
3) Assessment vs. curriculum development 4) Summative vs. formative use of assessments
5) Teacher professionalism vs. standards monitoring assessments (from norm-referenced to standards-referenced assessments)
Despite this misfit, the ingrained examination-oriented culture in Hong Kong continued. This led to a vicious cycle of intensified competition in public examinations and further neglect of attributes needed but not tested.
An Examination-oriented Culture
In Hong Kong, as observed by Bond:
“….parents exert massive pressure on their children to do well in school. Homework is supervised and extends for long periods, extracurricular activities are kept to a minimum, effort is rewarded, tutors are hired, and socializing is largely confined to family outings.” (1991, p.18)
Traditionally, Chinese parents attach great importance to education and academic achievement (Ho, 1986 p.1 – 37). Education is considered a main vehicle for upward social mobility, especially for those who fled to Hong Kong from Mainland China after World War II. Also important is the belief that achievement is essentially a matter of effort, not ability. The malleability of human behaviour is known as one of the fundamental precepts of Confucianism (Munro, 1977).
Examinations play such a dominant role in the lives of Chinese teachers and students that it is imperative they are handled effectively, and in ways that promote productive student performance. A survey conducted by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups (1997) on secondary school students reveals that the testing culture has successfully bred a sizable proportion of students who are ready to agree that the stress from examination is self-imposed (38 percent) or due to parental aspirations (27 percent), rather than due to examinations being held too often, not appropriately designed or being too difficult. It seems that students have already internalized the cultural values and beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning. Almost half (45 percent) of the students believe that examinations are the best way to assess one’s performance.
A report on the secondary examination systems in several Confucian-heritage cultures describes an “obsession with higher education” as a characteristic of the Asian region:
“Higher competition for college admission has led some secondary schools in the region to ignore formal standards of curriculum and concentrate principally on curriculum that prepares students for college entrance examinations. Hence, some teachers in higher schools give weight to memory-centered instructions that encourage cramming and memorization. It seems that there is a tendency for student assessment to be merely summative, used to support administrative decisions on promotion, streaming and selection of students for tertiary education and for competition in the job market.” (SEAMEO 1998)
In Hong Kong, as in most other Confucian-heritage cultures in the region, examinations are likely to continue to play an important role in society into the foreseeable future. However, as is recognised above, their high status comes at a price. What is worse is that examinations are “loved” so dearly in this part of the world that it seems even the very victims of examinations are not that enthusiastic about changes for improvement.
Sociological Implications of Public Examinations
As argued in Part I of Chapter Five, the purpose of the first public examinations introduced by the colonial government went beyond selecting suitable students for university admission. It can be understood as one of the mechanisms to create English-speaking elites to support the Government. Being similar to the SAT in some ways, these examinations defined what was considered legitimate knowledge
or competence and controlled the distribution of rare social resources.
Researchers such as Bernstein and Bourdieu have developed some insights regarding the role of examinations as instruments of social control. Broadfoot has been applying sociological theories in her analysis of educational assessments. Along the same vein, Carless claims the ancient Chinese system of imperial examination originated in around 165 BC represents the earliest example of how examinations can be used to shape and legitimize state-control over individuals and society (Carless, 2011 p.47). Though the imperial examination ended about a century ago at the decline of the Qing Dynasty, its spirit remains firmly embedded in Chinese societies (Cheng, 1994 p.67 – 84). Though not without defects and known to be corruption plagued, the imperial examination system provided some kind of pathway to commoners to fight for their life chances (Miyazaki, 1976 p.111 – 113). According to Lee, “the belief in the possibility of upward social mobility through educational success was important and became a significant driving force for many ordinary people to study hard for a better future.” (1996, p.38) The residual influence of the Chinese imperial examination system works at a perceptual level and impacts on attitude towards examinations amongst Chinese (Biggs, 1996 p.45 – 68). Evidence put forward in the earlier section illustrates that in a Confucian-heritage society like Hong Kong, examinations are so “loved” that a substantial proportion of students believe they are the best way to assess performance.
According to Bernstein, social control, by which individuals may reach positions of power, contributes to social reproduction, i.e. those processes that sustain given social structures over time. Bernstein has identified three key message systems of schooling: “curriculum” or what is classified as valid knowledge; “pedagogy”, how that knowledge is transmitted; and “evaluation”, the way that knowledge is assessed (Bernstein, 1971 p.63 – 66). Broadfoot goes further to purport that it is generally assessment procedures that determine curriculum and pedagogy, and hence social reproduction (Broadfoot, 1996 p.102 – 124). Bordieu & Passeron argue that examinations are in fact a means by which schools maintain the power of the privileged class (1977, 1990 p.142 – 167). They often support the interests of certain dominant groups and hence can be used to perpetuate their influence (Bourdieu, 1991 p.119 – 120). Along this line of argument, any change in examination systems implies a restructuring of the power base in society, which is bound to arouse strong challenges and resistance from some quarters. This conservative force has been proved too often as a barrier for change to enable examinations to do more than select just a handful of elites for further advancement (Eggleston, 1984 p.22 – 28). The fact that public examinations manage to flourish in Hong Kong and the United States despite the extent and frequency of criticisms against them seems to support the claims of these researchers.
Limitations of Public Examinations
examinations in Hong Kong were highly respected and internationally renowned, but they were not without limitations.
Norm-referenced
Both the HKCEE and HKALE had an important selection function. Users of examination results implicitly expected the grades of different subjects to be “equally” difficult to obtain and the level of attainment attached to each grade to be reasonably stable between years. If these expectations were not reasonably met, the credibility of the Authority and its examinations would be at stake. The grading methodology was designed primarily to achieve these two objectives. It was through applying norm-referencing principles to a control-group that the Authority managed to maintain its grading standards despite syllabus changes and variation in difficulty level of question papers between years.
The norm-referenced nature of these examinations required a broadly similar distribution of candidates across the grades from year to year, and hence their results were unable to inform users the actual standards of the candidates and whether standards were rising or falling in any absolute sense. However, this information is the starting point for formulating any education policy in a large scale to monitor or improve standards over time. Besides, results of a norm-referenced examination cannot tell categorically what candidates awarded a certain grade know or can do. They provide only one piece of information that:
1) reflects a candidate’s snapshot performance in a sample of the syllabus, at a certain time under certain controlled conditions; 2) helps to provide some evidence for predicting a candidate’s chance
of success in work of future study;
3) provides a broad indicator of students’ performance in the examination subjects.
(HKEA 1998bHA)
Results of the HKCEE and HKALE might be adequate for the selection function which is typically associated with norm-referenced assessment and concerned with relative performance. Certification is essentially concerned with attesting to the standards achieved in broadly criterion-referenced terms. The HKCEE and HKALE only managed, to a certain extent, to fulfil the certification function and, by design, they were inadequate for informing whether educational standards were changing.
Too Academically Focused
Both the HKCEE and HKALE were predominantly academic in focus. In the case of the HKCEE, as the retention rate of students in senior secondary education increased, the incompatibility of the certification and selection functions became more apparent. There was increasing dilemma between maintaining the standards of the examinations and accommodating lower achieving students. Attempts had been made to
address the problem through offering a range of application-oriented subjects, but the entries of most of them remained low over the years. This situation had not been satisfactorily resolved since the introduction of a nine-year free compulsory education in 1978.
Designed to cater for what was originally a small minority of academically capable students, the HKCEE had been providing since the 1990s, so far as it was able to do so, for the certification needs of the large majority of school students in Hong Kong at almost the full ability range. The wide-ranging abilities of students created a measurement problem since a single test had difficulties in accommodating the needs of all students. The most significant findings of a research conducted by the Authority on the widening gap in HKCEE performance from 1988 to 1995 were as follows:
1) The performance in the HKCEE of the top third of the public sector schools remained stable, and hence there was no evidence of a falling standard.
2) However, over the period, the gap for candidates achieving all subjects at grade E or above, using the top/bottom third yardstick, the gap had widened by 15.2 percent and 5.9 percent respectively for public sector schools1 and day schools; while using the top/bottom 20 percent yardstick, the gap had widened by 18.0 percent and 4.6 percent respectively.
3) The percentage of secondary school population that went on to sit the HKCEE during the period increased by 7 percent. There were
an increasing number of low-achieving students who were well out of their depth. For this group, an academic examination such as the HKCEE was not a sensible or achievable goal. These students contributing to the “falling standard” would not have gone on to Secondary 5 in the 1980s.
(HKEA 1996HA)
With a large number of students leaving schools without any certificate of what they knew or could do, the system failed to lay a good foundation for further development of their potentials. For such students, the system could be counterproductive, leading to a sense of failure and demoralization. It is clear that, to meet the requirements of a changing future, all members of society will need to have a firm foundation upon which to build new knowledge, and the desire and motivation to do so is rooted in the confidence in oneself as a learner. Public examinations as a part of the education system are expected to facilitate this to happen.
HKALE as a Subject-based Examination
Both the HKCEE and HKALE were subject-based examinations with no compulsory subject entry or built-in requirement for a breadth of study in the way that a “grouped certificate” would provide. For the HKCEE, there was a minimum requirement for entering into sixth form and students normally took five to eight subjects. However, for the HKALE, students normally took only two to three subjects, in addition
to AS Chinese Language and Culture and AS English Language (to meet the admission requirements of local universities). This very design of the HKALE made it very difficult to avoid a high degree of specialization at an early stage. This was reinforced by the general practice of students having to begin to follow either an arts-stream, a science-stream or a commercial-stream when they moved into Secondary 4 in the old senior secondary school system (Broad et al., 1998 p.51).
It is widely held to be unacceptable to have examinations which meet only a narrow range of needs, both in terms of the students who are served by the system and the range of attributes which are assessed. Though the HKALE served the selective function well, there was not enough emphasis on other desirable attributes. While imposing considerable stress upon all of those involved, the examination was not particularly conducive to full-potential growth and lifelong learning, which are the qualities perceived to be essential for meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Lack of Flexibility in the Assessment Scheme
Shortly after the implementation of the tailored approach in the HKCEE Mathematics in 1998 as detailed in Chapter Five, it was suggested that further measures in this direction could be introduced to cater for students of varying abilities. For example, some parts of the syllabus could be set aside to form a core. Mastery of the core part
would lead to a pass in the subject. This would provide some sense of satisfaction to the lower achievers and motivate them to learn better. The Authority conducted a consultation exercise with subject committees in 1999. Individual subject committees responded differently but on the whole, there were more criticisms than support (HKEAA 1999/2000, cited in Cheung, 2005 p.162).
The Mathematics Committee
“The core part would sound to be an unexpected low standard and the grade descriptors would only disclose the low standard of the examination. The society might not accept this standard as grade E level….. The core part of a syllabus would be so small that no higher order thinking skill could be incorporated into it.”
The Chemistry Committee
“It is difficult to identify a part of the chemistry syllabus, which can be considered as essential for a Secondary 5 student…..The syllabus is fundamental and basic. It already constitutes a core….The core part of a CE chemistry syllabus probably includes topics, such as bonding and structure, chemical equations and the concept of mole etc., which the academic low achievers would find them difficult to master. In consequence, adoption of the core-competence model would probably produce a greater number of examination failures.”
The Economics Committee
“The definitions of many fundamental concepts were difficult lessons to less able students... However, these…..were usually considered to be the essential concepts and skills that a Secondary 5 student